The Conservative election pledge of national service and a quadruple lock on pensions has only enhanced the centrality of gerontocracy in the UK. There is no expectation of a Conservative victory, instead shoring up the core voter base as an electoral strategy[1] in the face of a Labour landslide. But no one should be surprised by this. Britain has been a gerontocracy for decades.

Homeowners are the primary voting demographic[2]. Both Labour and the Conservatives have tried to cultivate the property owning classes. That is what the Red Wall is, a large swathe of the Midlands and North where retired working class voters own their homes. These same voters whose increasing property values have produced a major asset class and a significant incentive to hold on to that value. Every residential objection to property or infrastructure development (garbed in the language of conservation, community values, overcrowding or any other excuse) comes down to the preservation of property values in the face of large scale developments that encourage multiplier effects, potentially lowering house values in that area as it attracts younger demographics that expand the potential for jobs and services in the area, leading toward market saturation.

Being such a valuable asset class that provides stability and comfort, it is only natural that homeowners become an obstacle to development. Preserving the character of a community means maintaining the area as it was when the property was bought. Such stability and comfort make them a reliable voting demographic. Young people move from their parent’s house to university, changing address on a yearly basis for 3-4 years and then usually moving to a large city for job opportunities, making them an unreliable voting base. Flighty and swathed in the voting blocs of big cities means they have limited voice in elections. Property ownership confers a solid suburban existence that is easier to identify for pollsters and election managers, meaning your concerns are prioritised by the local council and MP.

This is the long arc of the post-war generation, moving from the cosmopolitan nomadism of the city to the solidity of the suburbs as families are started and career trajectories planned. “What is the fastest way to become cautious and protective? Have children. What is the surest route to resenting tax rises? Making money. Want to get fixated on employment and economic stability? Get a mortgage. What is the most atavistic instinct all three draw out? Fear. Fear for your family’s welfare, safety and future. Fear for your bank balance and quality of life. Fear of sudden financial reversal and even possession. Fear encourages us to limit exposure, minimise risk, oppose change and erect safeguards. It drives us, in short, to conserve”[3].

This cycle is fine so long as housing stock is built and infrastructure adequately maintained and expanded. Yet the cruel irony is that fear is what produces the housing shortages and infrastructural decrepitude being witnessed today. In trying to preserve what they had, elderly property owners are locking the young out of the housing market or pushing them to live in exurban developments that are further from the most productive work in Britain, increasing transport and living costs while decreasing productivity consequently.

Yet this is a process long in the making, predating the boomer generation’s old age. Britain has been gerontocratic in nature for much longer. This can be seen in the New Towns developments of the 1960s which were purposefully designed to limit urban sprawl and constrain city growth, imagining a Domesday revival of village communities to house a growing industrial (and post-industrial) workforce. The use of industrial development certificates achieved similar results, restricting the growth of Birmingham and London by encouraging firms to establish workshops and offices in underdeveloped regions via capital grants, training grants and direct labour subsidies. The idea being that regional growth hubs could be fostered while limiting the growth of existing cities. Nothing of the sort happened. In Wales, just over half of the jobs promised by IDCs were delivered, with many of these being short-term as firms who used the certificates pulled out of those regions after five years due to lack of access to a skilled workforce, being too far from their company head office and being hamstrung by limited transport links[4].

Nostalgia and a hatred of centralised development underpinned these policies. Instead of allowing cities to expand, incorporating towns and villages within their commuter belts and developing industrial parks and business districts within newly enfranchised transportation networks, it was preferred to maintain the traditional character of Britain, a series of autonomous townships and counties. It is surprising they didn’t reintroduce assizes or re-empower the county sheriff.

You may ask what is gerontocratic about this, but remember what the underpinning conviction is for these attitudes – fear. The fear of change manifests itself in an anti-development attitude. Better to push the costs somewhere else, to some forgotten town in South Wales or the Northeast, than to allow for new houses to be built, roads to be laid and businesses to start. But fear is only one aspect of this. Another word captures this attitude to a much better degree – stability.

Stability is the watchword of British politics. We want a stable state, a stable economy, a stable life. Such a demand has cross-party consensus, with Keir Starmer pledging economic stability as his primary target once in power. As Chris Dillow points out[5], this means in practice a further layering of technocratic governance at the regulatory and macroeconomic levels, an increase in transfer payments and greater protectionism. These dynamics are already playing out in the modern economy, with 6% of the population taking disability benefits[6] and social security and health spending taking up over a third of government expenditure[7]. We also have a convoluted system of government through devolution and quangocracy[8]. Yet we are still massively exposed to external shocks in energy (partially due to net zero policies which encourage an overreliance on Chinese provided components for wind and solar farms combined with practically no investment in nuclear power), agriculture and industrial capacity.

The dynamics Dillow describes are fundamentally contradictory as the need for protectionism (i.e. a British form of securonomics as proposed by Rachel Reeves) require significant state investment in medium and long-term infrastructure projects, from road-building and improvement to railways and airport expansion. It also means investment in workforce training programmes for construction as well as an expansion in domestic materials production, most likely subsidised by the state through grants or tax cuts. How can this happen in an environment where state spending is primarily concentrated on healthcare and transfer payments. Will they make hard choices like cutting pension costs, means-testing old age benefits and reforming the way care is paid for (through housing equity for example)? No, because that would infringe upon the core demographic – elderly property owners. Much better to introduce nonsense like a national service to provide voluntary work. 18 year olds can drive to the care home on crumbling, pothole filled roads to find they have more unpaid work to do as there has been a brown out at the facility.

Gerontocracy is stability. Where it rules in politics, it is the opposite of dynamism and risk. The most dynamic thing any British government could do now to help economic growth and produce wealth would be either to abolish or seriously pare back the Town and Country Planning Act, freeing up exurban and greenbelt land for regeneration and productive use, and eliminating the potential for objections from residents or a variety of charities and think tanks who all hold a twee nostalgia for a Britain of a bygone era. The irony being that the things these groups want to preserve were built by ruthless patricians and landholders who had no interest in the objections of residents or committees.

And there’s a deeper irony still in that the demand for Britain to remain stable, to remain the same, to maintain entitlements and prevent overdevelopment, has necessitated calls for greater and greater levels of immigration into the UK. By being a country that limits its capital expenditure, refuses to invest in productivity-enhancing infrastructure (and the multiplier effects that can cause[9]) and allows itself to become a glorified pensions and healthcare company, there will those who demand immigration as a solution to these woes. To plug employment gaps, provide unskilled labour on farms and in factories, and provide the taxes for social security payments and care needs. Forget the difficult conversation of suggesting property owners use their house’s equity to fund their own care or means-testing the state pension when continued decrepitude can be subsidised by immigrants.

By trying to preserve the country, the political classes are quite happy to alter its demographic and ethnic structure. So long as it can preserve the myth that we’re producing a dynamic economy by importing over half a million people a year, let the cities be overrun by social detritus that become further burdens[10] on an overstretched state.

Britain is a country in desperate need of infrastructural development[11] and investment[12]. Yet we have a political class interested in two primary interest groups – homeowners and immigrants, the two being intertwined as the former become fiscal drains on the state and the latter plug short-term gaps (at least in theory but usually not in practice). The British state has a parasite on its back in the form of social security payments and planning laws. Between them, they drain any economic dynamism, diverting it into ridiculous regional strategies and further devolution.

Nothing will change after the election, with Labour’s proposals for governmental reform meaning an increase in political and technocratic bloat. More mayoralties and committees to preside over residential objections to housing development and environmental objections to infrastructure improvements. More capability to pass the buck from one official to the next. Britain is a gerontocracy, priding itself on stability as things fall apart and immigrants alter the landscape of this country. Will there be a politician or powerbroker willing to break this cycle, push beyond the long arc of the 20^th century and instead disenfranchise these parasitical demographics, or will the political class continue to watch over a sinking ship?

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[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/united-kingdom-election-conservatives-gray-vote-young-elderly-triple-lock-plus/

[2] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/uk-general-election-1983-2019-voters-data-demographics/

[3] https://thecritic.co.uk/we-demand-supply/

[4] John Osmond, Creative Conflict

[5] https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2024/05/starmers-stability-promise.html

[6] https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/idle-britain

[7] https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/what-does-government-spend-money

[8] https://collapsepatchworks.com/2020/04/25/modes-of-politics-ideological-cycles-fragmented-britain/

[9] https://openresearch.lsbu.ac.uk/item/8vvw5

[10] https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/five-myths-about-immigration-and

[11] https://www.icaew.com/-/media/corporate/files/about-icaew/what-we-do/policy/public-finances/funding-uk-infrastructure.ashx

[12] https://idforum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Investment-Delivery-Forum-REL-Infrastructure-Investment-Challange-Press-Release-06.11.23.pdf